Debra Thomas

Debra Thomas writes literary fiction about families, migration, grief, and the difficult work of rebuilding trust. Josie and Vic follows two siblings who reunite after a long separation and must confront the different ways they remember their family. She Writes Press published the novel in 2023 as Thomas's second book, following Luz, which received the Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction. Thomas's professional background includes nursing, teaching English and English as a second language, and advocacy with immigrant communities. Those experiences support her attention to care, language, and displacement without reducing her characters to social issues. In Josie and Vic, the siblings' renewed contact unfolds alongside questions of belonging, responsibility, and what each person can reasonably ask of the other. Thomas uses alternating perspectives and remembered events to show how shared history can produce sharply different private narratives, making reconciliation a gradual process rather than a simple return to family closeness.